There are twelve tracks on Josefine Opsahl’s album Cytropia, each with the duration of a rock song. Remarkably, there is a straight line from the first to the last – both in timbre, rhythm, melody, atmosphere, and playing. The ears are embraced by a gentle melancholy created by small cello figures in long sequences, with a slow-moving cello melody on top. Some parts in minor, others more open.
She is receiving quite a lot of praise these days for her many projects – an opera and a ballet – alongside her work as a cellist-composer, and it must almost be due to the highly accessible, cohesive, and dreamy sound she consistently delivers. I must admit that I have become somewhat skeptical along the way. Both as a musician and as a composer, I wish she would challenge herself with new approaches and new visions for the stories her music should tell. On Cytropia, we approach a constant state of uniform sound, evoking thoughts of the deliberate inertia of New Age composers.
There are quite beautiful moments along the way. The track »Cyborg« is crystal-clear in its surface. A piece like »Leaverecalls«, in its mechanics, the American minimalism of Philip Glass. But once again, one misses displacements and rhythmic additions that could challenge the static soundscape. The last hundred years of experimentation have expanded the battlefield of cello playing. Opsahl draws on some of these experiences to create her own small mechanical accompaniments for herself. Yet, the setup with a sequencer and a cello seems limiting in allowing Opsahl to explore timbres and ideas where the gravity of melancholy can truly be felt.
On Kaikō – the trio Treen’s second release – saxophonist Amalie Dahl, pianist Gintė Preisaitė, and percussionist Jan Philipp demonstrate confidence, mutual trust, and a distinct musical adventurousness. The opening track »Hylē« unfolds with rattling percussion and strikes seemingly aimed directly at the piano strings, stumbling forward over an underlying drone. The saxophone cuts in with phrases that sound at once admonishing and bewildered. Nothing feels meticulously calculated; instead, the music is carried by a keen awareness of the three musicians’ individual voices within the shared soundscape.
The same basic formula unfolds across the album’s three other pieces, yet always in new variations. On »Kinetic«, Dahl’s saxophone emerges with much greater weight, its slowly growing crescendo mirrored and challenged by Preisaitė’s piano. Improvised music can often slip into polite holding patterns, with the musicians taking turns in the spotlight – but not here. Dahl, Preisaitė, and Philipp appear as three drifting islands without anchors, propelled by their own currents yet inexorably drawn in the same direction. The result is both sudden shifts and an organic flow that can pull the listener into a trance, if one surrenders and simply lets the sound wash over.
It is precisely the trust between them that allows the three to play freely, without fear of leaving or losing each other. In doing so, they create a momentum that is hard to resist – whether one chooses to let the islands drift past or to float along in their current.
English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek